Resource race
July 29, 2011
The manganese nodules lying on the floor of the Pacific Ocean are roughly the size of potatoes. But together they weigh an estimated 62 billion tons.
The nodules are made up of nearly 30 percent pure manganese. But industrialized nations are primarily interested in the traces of copper, nickel and cobalt which they contain.
Germany was relatively slow to catch on in the race to secure resources from the ocean floor. While a number of nations reserved a patch of the Pacific for themselves in 2001, Germany didn't get involved until 2006.
Now the country has leased 75,000 square kilometers (29,000 square miles) of seabed between the 5th and 10th degree of latitude north of the equator between Hawaii and Mexico. It's a surface as large as Bavaria.
"We've only leased the area," Thomas Kuhn, a geologist at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hanover told Deutsche Welle. "It is not owned by the Federal Republic of Germany."
Maps and samples
Kuhn and a team of German scientists spent six weeks last year on a research vessel surveying the area.
"Using echo sounding we created a complete map of the ocean floor's topography. We call it a bathymetric chart," Kuhn said.
The scientists also used specialized devices to take pictures of the ocean floor and collect the manganese nodules lying as deep as 4,800 meters below the water's surface. A probe cut out 50 square centimeter sections of the sediment before transporting them to the research vessel.
Economic importance
Germany has long coped with a lack of natural resources. It's almost entirely reliant on foreign suppliers for metals like copper, nickel and cobalt.
"Any step towards independence should be welcomed," said Eugen Weinberg, a commodities analyst with Commerzbank.
But Germany will have to be patient. Although its lease currently permits prospecting in the area, it can only apply for a license to harvest the underwater resources after 2021.
There are about 8 million tons of copper and 10 million tons of nickel in the area. That's enough copper to cover Germany's needs for six years, and enough nickel for 80 years. While the copper is primarily used in electronics and machines, nickel is used in steel alloys.
Dormant discovery
The metals on the floor of the Pacific Ocean are no new discovery. German scientists first researched them 30 years ago.
But with metal prices dropping to extreme lows during the early 1980s, no particular importance was given to them. The intense technical requirements of harvesting them were cost prohibitive.
Still, the research done at the time was not useless. The ocean floor was mapped extensively and samples were analyzed. That has given German researchers a boost now, according to Kuhn.
Human heritage
The ocean floor and the resources it contains belong to the "common heritage of humanity," according to the 1994 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. That means in waters outside of sovereign territories and economic zones, the ocean floor is without an owner.
But this no man's land has an administrator: the International Seabed Authority. Since 2001, the UN institution located in Jamaica has ruled over claims by nations and private companies for rights to survey and harvest resources on the ocean floor.
Prospecting rights are generally granted for 15-year periods, meaning that the first applicants will be able to start harvesting in 2016. One consortium and seven nations including India, Russia, China and South Korea currently have prospecting rights.
No worries
Germany's Kuhn says he's not worried about other nations' head starts, because he's not certain they'll be able to start harvesting in five year's time. That's because the technology required to reliably retrieve manganese nodules from deep waters over a period of 20 years is still lagging.
"Despite the efforts of the South Koreans and the Indians, who want to advance the technology, so far systems have only been tested at 2,000 meters," Kuhn said, adding all nations have a long way to go before they can harvest at 5,000 meters depth.
According to Michael Lodge of the International Seabed Authority, anyone who can prove they have "the technological and financial capacity to prospect in an area for 15 years" is eligible for a license to do so. The fee is $250,000.
Ecological risks?
Harvesting manganese nodules from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean isn't completely risk free. The metals are surrounded by algae and animals, causing concern among marine biologists and conservationists.
"The UN's International Seabed Authority should have established much larger protected areas and undisturbed reference areas," said Stephan Lutter of the World Wildlife Fund. "Emerging economies and commercial interests are threatening to creep past environmental protection standards and the precautionary principle to gain access to the lucrative metals market."
According to Lutter an uncontrolled resource rush at sea would impact both the environment and biological species which have yet to be researched.
Author: Rayna Breuer (gps)
Editor: Sam Edmonds